What is ID Protection?

When a domain name is registered, some information (such as personal/business) is displayed on the whois lookup as per regulatory requirements. Depending on the domain name extension, different types of information is displayed to those conducting a lookup.

Where gTLD registrations such as .com, .net and .org are concerned, personal contact information such as name, address, email address and phone number must be supplied as part of the registration process and this is displayed on the whois database for all to see. It is a regulatory requirement that the information supplied on the domain name registration is valid to allow for contact to be made via email, but this information can be hidden by private proxy information.

ID Protection allows you to protect your identity and reduce spam from scammers scraping whois databases; it does this by replacing your information with generic name and address details. The final piece of the puzzle is a hidden email address which forwards onto your real email address; this means they won’t see your real email address, but you will see emails sent regarding your domain name.

Is ID Protection available on .AU domain names?

Unfortunately not. AU namespace policy does not permit ID protection on .AU domain names.

Although this isn’t too much of a concern as very little information is shown. On a standard whois search only the Registrant/Entity data is shown (including ABN/ACN/Trademark/etc) along with the name of the person who is the registrant and technical contacts. No phone number or postal address details are shown on any whois search. The only time an email address is shown on a .AU domain name whois is when the search is conducted via the AusRegistry website and this is protected by a captcha.